Grow Happy Goal: Food

This post is sponsored by Knowledge Universe. I may have received product or monetary compensation in exchange for sharing my honest opinion of and personal experiencewith this brand.

As you know, being a dessert blogger is my day job. It’s my craft, my trade. My supplies are sugar and butter. My tools are a good lens, great natural lighting, and my Macbook. It’s my job. And I L-O-V-E it.

My other job, which frequently overlaps and/or trumps the a fore mentioned job, is to provide the framework for a healthy and happy lifestyle at home for my daughter and my husband. This means maintaining a constant supply of carrot sticks and apple wedges, monitoring screen time (yes, including mine), and saying things like “Oh yes, Mommy looooooooooooves exercise!”

It’s a constant juggling act and tight-wire walk. I’ve written many posts over the past year about my own struggles with maintaining a healthy lifestyle, and recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how my behaviors affect my family. How can I improve the overall quality of health in our home? Where do we start? What sort of goals would be realistic and attainable for us?

Knowledge Universe, which teaches and cares for 160,000 kids aged infant through school aged every day in its KinderCareLearning Centers, CCLC Child Care Centers and Champions programs, just announced the company is teaming up with Michelle Obama’s Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA) to help fight childhood obesity.

Knowledge Universe launched the Grow Happy initiative to offer families tools, tips, recipes, advice and inspiration that can help us all make simple, small changes that can lead to healthier lifestyles.

I was blown away by the Grow Happy initiative. It’s a simple, workable plan for families to set healthy goals and track them. They’ve broken down goal for a healthy lifestyle into 3 categories:

Food

Body

Mind

I’m excited to join in this initiative and share our goals and progress with you here!

To get started, my family spent some time together one afternoon reading through the goals tracker and discussing what it means to be “healthy,” and how we want to achieve it. We read through the suggested goals on Grow Happy and picked a few in each section (Food, Body, Mind) that we thought would be good changes for our family.

We spent a lot of time talking about our food goals– it’s the most challenging area for all three of us.

Here are the FOOD goals we set:

Eat 5 fruits and vegetables per day.

Drink eight 8-ounce glasses of water per day.

Choose unprocessed whole food instead of processed food most of the time.

We’ll be tracking our progress a week at a time. I printed out separate progress trackers for all three of us to hang on the refrigerator so that we have a visual reminder every day (you can download and print out your own tracker on the Grow Happy blog).

In an effort to help myself accomplish goal #3, I’ve started following a new blogger (thanks to a recommendation from Shanna) on Instagram: Eating Whole with Lauren Brimley. I think she has some fantastic ideas for eating realistic meals that are made with whole, healthy foods. When I scroll through her IG feed, I find myself repeatedly thinking, “Oh! That looks good…. and easy! I could totally make that and like it…”

It’s exactly the inspiration I need on a daily basis, and I highly recommend checking her out! One of my favorite recipes she’s posted is for a little yogurt bowl she says she eats as a pre-workout snack. I’ve made this several times and absolutely love it. Sometimes I’ll add a little coconut oil if I’m eating it pre-workout like she suggests, but most of the time I leave it out.

It’s SO good. Seriously. It’s like my two worlds have merged and made a healthy dessert baby.

Find the time to sit down with your family this week and discuss goals to make your home lifestyle healthier. Find realistic ways to improve, write down your goals, and keep track of your progress. And be sure to visit the Grow Happy Website for help, inspiration, and the tools you need to help along the way.

In 2 future posts, I’ll be discussing my family’s goals for Body and Mind and the progress we’re making.

Since we all know that it’s easier to get kids to eat healthier foods if they’re involved in the kitchen, the Grow Happy site features some really fun videos of kids cooking with Knowledge Universe’s registered dietitian, Carly Dunn. Check out the videos, recipes, tips and more at www.growhappy.me. Download your own goal tracker, set some healthy goals, and let me know how it goes!

Ashton is the owner and author ofSomething Swanky. Although first and foremost a wife and mother, she considers herself an online entrepreneur, freelance writer and photographer, and brand ambassador.Her focus is in food styling, food photography and recipe development.

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4 Responses to “Grow Happy Goal: Food”

I love this ! I eat a version of this almost every morning for breakfast. I mix up the yogurt and chia seeds the night before and pop it in the fridge. In the am add some fresh fruit and toasted nuts..Instant breakfast! :)

Wow, I really like your approach. I think I should also follow the same thing. Honestly speaking making my family eat 5 fruits a day is big task. I have started using designer funky meal set for my child. Most of the times, during dinner she starts to play with the cartoon printed on the meal set.

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Behind every chocolate chip cookie and every sprinkled cupcake on this blog is a burgeoning photographer, an emerging entrepreneur, an experimental baker, and a social networker. I’m Ashton, the face behind Something Swanky! And I believe in doing what you love and loving what you do.
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